Sissy Pug is ready for spring

Bella is my dog, a nine-month-old pug. And she is very much ready for it to be summer again.

Bella hasn’t been really fond of winter since the first snowstorm. That was when my wife, Kay, and I received our first visit from Sissy Pug. Sissy Pug arrives every time Bella figures she’s been outside long enough. She will start shivering and try to pick her feet up out of the snow. If that doesn’t get her enough sympathy, she will then cower by the door like she’s being threatened.

I know what you’re thinking — maybe she is legitimately cold. Maybe the poor little thing is getting frostbite on her little pug feet.

Believe me when I say we too were concerned at one time that Sissy Pug might not be an act. Like the very first time she had to go outside in a snowstorm, at the beginning of the winter.

You might remember, while we did get a dusting or two to kick off the winter season, our first legitimate snowfall was more of a dumping, featuring heavy snow and high winds. Now, imagine you are a little pug puppy that has never seen snow before, and those are the conditions you are presented with when you have to pee.

Needless to say, Bella was not particularly enthused about going out in the near-blizzard conditions. As soon as she went outside she began cowering and looking at us like, “Why are you torturing me?”

We felt terrible about it, and I think it took her probably eight hours before she finally would stay out long enough to go to the bathroom.

We felt very sorry for Sissy Pug.

Only as the winter went on, we noticed something — if Bella felt like playing, it didn’t matter how cold it was outside, she would play. She would trounce through the snow and chase after snowballs and twigs and even falling snowflakes. If she thought we were having fun, she was having fun, and she could spend an hour out there with no problem.

Yet, when we were in a hurry and wanted her to “Go potty,” it didn’t matter how warm it might be — 35, 40 degrees — and Sissy Pug would make a quick appearance.

Often times Bella will go outside to go to the bathroom, play for 20 minutes with no problem, and then as soon as it’s time to go in, Sissy Pug will appear.

As the winter has gone along, and Bella has had more and more opportunities to go outside in the snow, Sissy Pug has made fewer and fewer appearances. We still get plenty of visits from her, usually at the most inopportune times, but it’s becoming less and less common.

But now as the weather has warmed up for a couple of days, Bella has been presented with two new problems in the snow — tough treading, and ice.

As the snow gets wetter, and heavier, it has become much more difficult for Bella to make her way through it. And rather than use the paths she has throughout our yard, she always seems to need to take a new route. She struggles to walk through the snow as her feet are sucked down. But despite requiring extra care and effort to walk, she doesn’t seem to mind.

Ice, on the other hand, she does not like. She has had a couple spills running along and hitting a patch of ice. But she’s learning. She now tiptoes out of our doorway into the backyard because she knows there is ice there. We’d put salt down, but I know she’d eat every last piece. So she instead has had to learn how to deal with it.

And she is dealing with it, but not entirely happily. I can see her wondering where the warm weather went, and if it will ever return. I’m quite sure she is sick of winter.